Gossip and a Bag Full of Feathers

This story isn’t original, though I suppose my little retelling of it is.  Perhaps it’s something all of us need to be reminded of from time to time…

A quick stop at the post office and Jenny could finally head for home.  She pulled to the curb and parked and grabbed the envelope from the passenger’s seat.  This would only take a minute.


It was a cool day, and windy, and she stepped quickly up the sidewalk toward the door to find it opening as she reached it.  In courtesy to whoever was coming out, she pulled the door wide against the wind and smiled at the coming stranger, only to find it wasn’t a stranger at all.


There was the briefest moment of awkwardness.  Jenny opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again.  It was Anna who recovered first to offer a smile.


“Jenny.  How are you?”


Jenny was sure the older woman knew everything by now, which made her civility all the more perplexing.  


“I’m fine, Anna.  I hope you’ve been…well.”  


Another smile.  “I’m good.  How’s your mom doing?  I heard about her surgery.”


The kind smile and pleasant tone were almost more than Jenny could bear.  “She’s doing better.  She actually came home from the hospital on Tuesday.”


“Good.  I’m glad to hear that.”


Jenny said something else, though even as she spoke she hardly knew what she was saying, and perhaps none of it made sense to Anna either because another awkward silence fell between them when she finished.  Anna took a breath as if she was about to say good-bye and Jenny knew it was now or never.  Better to get it over with and have it done.  


“Anna,” she blurted.  “Listen.  I need to apologize to you.  I’ve said things lately I never should have said.  Someone told me…things…and those things made me assume other things and…well I really should have come to you first.  I’m sorry that I didn’t.”


There.  She had said it.  Her apology was probably too defensive and most certainly too vague, but it was an apology and that was probably more than most people would have done.  


Because the fault wasn’t entirely hers.  There were others who had talked, too.  


But at the same time, Jenny had run her mouth and there was no denying it.  Someone at church had told her something about Anna, the new ladies’ group leader, and the information had prompted her to completely misinterpret another incident involving the woman.  Only after she had shared it all with two others did she learn the partial-truth she had first received was motivated more by jealousy than by good sense.  And, sadly, one of the friends she had shared her “concerns” with afterward had made a few phone calls, though she had promised not to say anything, and before two days were up the entire thing had grown into a far baser story than Jenny would ever have imagined and the misrepresentation of the truth had been so bad even the poor pastor had been forced to become involved.

There was no question: Jenny had blown it.  And now she stood waiting for a response from the woman she had so delicately slandered.  The silence couldn’t have lasted for more than a few seconds, but it felt like decades.


Anna smiled again, slightly.  “I forgive you, Jenny.”


Jenny began breathing again.  She had offered her apology, it had been accepted, and now they could put this drama behind them and move on.  But she started when Anna spoke again.


“But I wonder,” said the other woman, “if you might be able to help me with a little project tomorrow morning.”


Jenny tried desperately to think of some reason why she couldn’t come, but nothing came to her.  “I…suppose so.  What do you need?”

Another one of those maddening smiles.  “Meet me at the church at 9:00.”

Jenny spent every second of the drive the following morning wondering what on earth Anna had planned for her and why in heaven’s name she had ever agreed to come.  Anna was waiting for her in the parking lot with a bag of…something in her hand.  The bag looked stuffed and yet the morning’s breeze tossed it about in her hand like it was empty.


Anna greeted her kindly and with more smiles and another inquiry after her mother, and then she explained.  “I have here a bag of down feathers.  I wonder if you wouldn’t mind to walk the neighborhood here and leave one feather on every doorstep.”


Jenny blinked at her.  “A feather.”


“On every doorstep, yes.  It’s very important.”  She reached to lightly touch Jenny’s arm.  “There’s a reason for it.  You’ll see.”


It was a ludicrous idea, but Jenny hadn’t the patience to question at the moment and so she nodded and started on her way.  Maybe it was some bizarre form of punishment, but the sooner she could have this ridiculous task over with, the sooner she could separate herself from this crazy woman who had complicated her life so much these past few days.  So one by one she visited the homes of the neighborhood, dropping a single feather at every doorstep and, thank heavens, only having to explain herself twice along the way.  When the feather bag was empty, she began her trek back toward the church, tired and winded and irritable.  


Anna was waiting.  Jenny pushed herself to smile as she handed the bag back to the older woman.  


“There you go.  I did what you asked.  I need to drive by my mom’s,” she said, already turning.  “I should go.”


“Oh, but I need you to go collect the feathers again.”
  
Jenny stopped on her heel and looked back at the woman.  Was she serious?  “Collect them?”


“Yes, please.  It was a mistake.  I need them all back.  Every one.”


Jenny stared at her a moment.  A mistake.  Every one.  The day’s wind was whipping the other woman’s hair about her forehead and snapping at the tail of her cardigan.  


“You want the feathers back?”


“I do.”  


“Every one?”


“Yes, please.”


“Anna,” she said, her impatience surely bleeding through this time.  “There’s no way!  The wind!  Those feathers are scattered all over town by now!”


Suddenly Anna’s features changed.  The slightest grin rose to her lips and she arched a graying brow knowingly.  “You’re right.  There’s no taking them back now.  The same is true of the words you have spoken, Jenny.  You can apologize and I can forgive, but you can never take back all the things you have said or fully repair all the damage that has been done.  You can never know how far your words have traveled, or whose ears they may have touched.  And there’s no way you can make it right with everyone.  There’s just no way.  But next time you’re tempted to gossip, I hope you’ll remember that.”


In loving reprimand Anna reached to squeeze her hand before she turned to walk away.  Humbled and properly reproved, Jenny’s eyes flooded with tears.  


There were feathers.  Scattered all over.  Impossible to retrieve.  Because of her.  


Jenny sighed as she watched Anna drive away.  By God’s grace and with His help, there wouldn’t be a next time.

 

 

 

 

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